Retiring in Oakland, California as an LGBTQIA+ Older Adult

Ivy Park at Lake Merritt is a memory-care community at 468 Perkins Street in Oakland, beside Lake Merritt and close to downtown. It is devoted exclusively to residents living with Alzheimer's, dementia or other cognitive changes, in private and companion studios, and it is licensed by California as a residential care facility for the elderly under RCFE number 019201599. Its programming is branded EverYou and is organized around five themes the operator describes as connect, create, fun, fit and learn, with activities from gardening and baking to live music and outings. This listing needs a piece of history attached to it, because the name has changed and the reason it is in this directory belongs to the old name. As Lakeside Park, under Watermark Retirement Communities, it was reported in 2019 as the first exclusively memory-care community in California to earn the SAGECare Platinum credential, meaning at least 80 percent of leadership and staff had completed SAGE's LGBTQIA+ aging training. The Human Rights Campaign also lists Lakeside Park, at this address, as a Long-Term Care Equality Index High Performer. Both of those belong to the previous operator. The community has since been rebranded as Ivy Park at Lake Merritt under Ivy Living, and Ivy Living's own page for it does not mention SAGE, SAGECare, HRC or LGBTQIA+ care anywhere. SAGECare is renewed annually and measures the share of a specific operator's staff who have trained, so it does not travel with a building when it changes hands. We have therefore not given this community a credential badge. If you are considering it, the useful question is a direct one: ask whether current staff hold SAGECare training under the new operator, and ask to see it. A yes would be worth a great deal here. Tell us what they say and we will record it.